The quality of surfaces is a significant property of objects used in everyday life such as furnishings and consumer items such as cars and the like, thus decisively determining the overall impression on a human observer. An example therefor are high-gloss or metallic finishes of car bodies or marbled effects of industrially manufactured objects or their surfaces.
The reproducible evaluation of the quality of surfaces in particular of said high-gloss finishes requires measuring instruments which capture precisely those physical quantities which decisively determine the overall impression on a human observer. Various methods and devices are known in the prior art for determining the visual properties and specifically the reflection and diffusion characteristics of surfaces.
With these devices and also the corresponding measuring methods, attention must be paid to that the device be arranged in a predetermined or defined angular position relative the finish, for example it is manually guided parallel to it. This is of decisive significance because the reflection and diffusion characteristics vary dramatically even with small angle variations dependent on said angular position.